Moscow’s air power success in Syria presents an opportunity to assess Russian inter- and intra-war adaptation in kinetic counterinsurgency. New technologies and tactics have enhanced the Russian Aerospace Force’s battlefield lethality and resilience but have not yet triggered a fundamental transition in operating concept. Russia’s air force has yet to actualize a reconnaissance-strike regime or advanced air-ground integration. Instead, situational and strategic factors appear to be more powerful contributors to its superior performance in the Syrian conflict. The way in which Russia has chosen to leverage its improvements in accurate munitions delivery, moreover, highlights key differences between its warfighting philosophy and that embraced by major Western powers. The resultant findings provide insight into Moscow’s coercive campaign logic, force-planning imperatives, and the likelihood that it might re-export the Syria model elsewhere.

Against weaker states and nonstate actors, powerful air forces working with competent proxy ground forces have been militarily effective in almost all cases, but their political effectiveness has varied by ambition and target. Air power was most likely to be politically effective in denial strategies against weak states but least effective when attempting to coerce nonstate actors by punishment. Air power was far more effective in breaking armies and toppling regimes than restoring political order in the aftermath of regime change. Some but not all of the strategies of the age of primacy will survive the transition to an age of great power rivalry. The persistence of small wars against nonstate actors will leave space for refinement of advisory models, close air support, and counter-network targeting. But missions that were feasible in an era of unchallenged air supremacy – CAS and persistent ISR – may become extinct against enemies possessing resilient IADS and long-range strike capabilities of their own.

What caused MCP strategy to radically change in October 1951, and to what effect? This chapter shows the MCP believed it had to change as geodemographic control tightened, and how it switched to a ‘long war’ strategy with lower force and incident levels but more determined subversion and greater use of the deep jungle. It then traces how that new strategy played out over 1951–4, until by the latter date the headquarters had retreated to south Thailand, numbers were falling slowly but inexorably and the MCP had started to contemplate negotiation. Above all, this chapter threads together the story from the communist perspective, both above with Chin Peng and colleagues, and from below in its struggles in the New Villages.

HNLMS De Ruyter and De Zeven Provinciën were the last cruisers of the Royal Netherlands Navy. In a period most ships were transferred from abroad (UK and USA), they were the largest post-war naval ships of Dutch manufacture. For years they were besides aircraft carrier Karel Doorman flagships. Construction of both ships started before World War II, but they did not enter service until 1953. After twenty years of service they were sold to Peru.

In May 1973 De Ruyter was renamed Almirante Grau. Modernizations 1985-88 and 1993-96. Decommissioned September 2017 (served 44 years with the Armada Peruana) to become a museum ship.

In August 1976 De Zeven Provinciën was renamed Aguirre. RIM-2 Terrier SAM removed, replaced by a hangar with large flight deck for three ASH-3D Sea King helicopters. Decommissioned 1999.

In 1964 new plans were developed concerning the structure of the fleet within the first six years of the seventies. The intention was to decommission the carrier and replace the cruisers by two or four guided missile frigates. They would be equipped with an automated force AAW weapon-system TARTAR. Their coordination system consisting of the 3D radar and an automatic Combat Information Processing and Distribution System (DAISY) with automated inter-ship data-links. In October 1970 an order was placed with KM De Schelde in Vlissingen (Flushing) for the delivery of two GM-frigates.

Short response time became necessary. The new threat required changes in the build up of the fleet and its armaments. A decision had to be taken to modernize or replace the large ships of the fleet, the latter being chosen for cost reasons. Technological developments also played a role. In the new design automation was saving space. The development of gas turbines for propulsion was one of these. It resulted in a personnel reduction. Gas turbines were immediately operational and increased readiness (not raising steam). The machinery was remote controlled. The development of a 3D radar in combination with an automatic combat information system (DAISY) was another innovation that appealed to the Royal Netherlands Navy. With the 3D radar, it became possible to establish, besides bearing and distance, also the altitude of incoming objects in the air and report these contacts to fire control (WM-25).

The Australian Army’s fondness for all things South-East Asian ebbed and flowed both before and after its involvement in the Vietnam War. The first two decades of the twenty-first century saw most of the Army’s operational experience gained in Afghanistan and Iraq, with little energy left to focus on fostering relations with Australia’s South-East Asian neighbours to its near north. After 11 September 2001, operational commitments removed from South-East Asia resulted in insufficient effort being expended in fostering regional ties for much of the subsequent two decades. This happened despite the obvious importance to Australia’s own security and stability and despite the experience in responding to regional crises in places like Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Fiji and elsewhere.

The world is facing unprecedented challenges, and the need for diplomacy has never been greater. Shaken to its economic and social foundations by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global order is being rewritten by China’s emergence as an assertive and uncompromising power. The challenges to globalisation, the retreat of democracy, the intergenerational impacts of terrorism, population displacement and climate change as well as evolving technologies in cyber and space all pose serious threats to a well-established order. Only through the coordinated use of hard and soft power, including sophisticated diplomacy, can any country effectively tackle these challenges. US President Joe Biden understood this before he took office. He understood that to preserve the United States’ global standing and power – shaken during the years of Donald Trump’s administration – the country had to return to the roots of diplomacy. Biden understood that diplomacy, not force, properly resourced and led by professionals with a unified purpose, had to be the first lever in reshaping the world to the challenges faced today.

In the first week of October 1960, Captains Hutomo Nastap and Harjo Sutarmo arrived in Australia to undertake air support and junior officers’ tactical courses at Australian Army schools.1 As the first members of the Indonesian Army to train in Australia, their arrival marked the start of a cooperative relationship between the armies of Indonesia and Australia which has endured into the 2020s.

In the early afternoon of 25 April 1975, the Australian Embassy to the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) shut its doors for the last time. One Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) C-130 Hercules had departed Tan Son Nhut air base earlier that morning, carrying a mixture of Vietnamese nuns, refugees and United Nations personnel to RAAF Fairbairn in Canberra. Two more left in the late afternoon, carrying the embassy’s Australian staff, their equipment and a handful of other Australians and Vietnamese to the safety of Bangkok. The embassy’s Vietnamese staff were, over the objections of Ambassador Geoffrey Price, not evacuated. Eschewing dramatics, Price sent his final cable to Canberra at 1 pm local time: ‘So I suppose all I need say now is thank you for all your support and close up the shop. Goodbye from Saigon.’ Thus ended – among other things – Australia’s defence engagement with the RVN.

Australia has heavily invested in peacemaking and nation-building across the Pacific, especially in Bougainville and Solomon Islands, where, in financial terms alone, it has directed over $4.1 billion in overseas development aid since 1991. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has played a critical role in delivering on Australia’s foreign policy objectives in both of these places, most visibly through major, majority-ADF-funded, pan-Pacific coalition operations like the Truce Monitoring Group (TMG) and Peace Monitoring Group (PMG) (Operations Bel Isi and Bel Isi II) in Bougainville between 1997 and 2003, and through its contribution to the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) (Operation Anode) from 2003 to 2013. More recently, some commentators have suggested that the goodwill capital generated through these ADF commitments has been eroded by Australia neglecting its Pacific neighbours. Australia has seemingly also been blindsided by the conflation of two contemporary geopolitical issues – namely, a rise in China’s regional influence and concerns voiced across the Pacific Islands Forum at Australia’s perceived inaction on climate change.

One of the remarkable features of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update is the clarity of its assessment of Australia’s strategic environment. Like all government documents, it is careful in its language but does not seek to hide the enormity of the challenges that changes in this environment present for Australia and the task of national defence. Its broad argument, which builds on the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper assessments, is that the Indo-Pacific is changing profoundly. Over time, these changes may see the emergence of a strategic order very different from the one established in the period after the Second World War. This order was described in the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper as the ‘rules-based international order’, an infrastructure of agreements, legal frameworks for dispute resolution, international institutions and assumptions animating diplomacy about how the world should work. The order, still largely in place but increasingly under threat, is underpinned by US economic and military power.